Textile People | Furniture for Education

cotton prices

This has been an unreal year for us in the textile industry. Raw materials prices have increased 3 fold, 300% !

Cotton prices ie the price of the fibre itself has trebled, that is increased by 300%. We have some long serving colleagues and indeed our MD has over 40 years in the trade (and he's only a young chap) but we have never known anything like this.

For our tea towels the actual cost of the raw materials cotton fabric is over 35% of the cost so when compared with a cotton shirt 15% of the cost then the increase in prices seems too high. however the reason for this is the ratio of manufacturing cost : raw materials . there is a lot more labour cost in a shirt than a tea towel.

Again take one of our cotton canvas bags there is more labour cost than cloth cost. Most of our aprons are made from poly/cotton and there has also been an increase in the price of polyester fibre due to the price increase of oil.

There is no sign of prices levelling off. we really cannot quote forward for the time being. Out of cotton and we make tablecloths and aprons, muslin squares and posseting cloths, shoppers and towels, oven gloves and oven mitts, bib aprons and waist , unfortunately none of these can remain at the same low prices.